1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to disc players and recorded-content information display methods therefor, and more particularly, to a disc player which reads from a disc having a first area for recording musical data and a second area for recording information related to the content of what is recorded in the first area, this information being called first-area recorded-content information, and displays the first-area recorded-content information on a display section in a designated language, and recorded-content information display methods therefor.
2. Description of the Related Art
Discs have been used which are provided with a first area for recording musical data and a second area for recording information (first-area recorded-content information) related to the content of what is recorded in the first area and in which the first-area recorded-content information is recorded in each of a plurality of blocks provided for the second area by a different combination of a character code and a language code. Such discs include CD-Rs, which are optical discs for which writing is allowed only once.
Since CD-Rs can record data, musical data is recorded in them and played back. More specifically, as shown in FIG. 8, a personal computer 1 is used to read desired musical data from a CD or other source and to record the data in a CD-R 2, or to record musical data received through a network in the CD-R 2, and the musical data is played back by a CD player 3. It is possible that management information, such as an album name, the title names of musical pieces, and artist names, is recorded in a lead-in area of the CD-R 2 as CD-TEXT when musical data is recorded in the CD-R 2, and the information is displayed on a display section of the CD player, if necessary, during playback. The CD-TEXT includes the following types of information.    (1) Name of an album or a track title (musical piece)    (2) Name of a performer (singer, player, conductor, orchestra, etc.)    (3) Name of a songwriter    (4) Name of a composer    (5) Name of an arranger    (6) Message from production/sponsor site or artist    (8) Disc identification information    (9) Genre identification information    (10) TOC information    (11) Second TOC information    (11) Album UPC/EAN code or ISRC code of each track    (12) Block-information size and character-code/language-code information
The CD-TEXT is recorded in the lead-in area in units of blocks, each block corresponding to a different combination of a language code and a character code. More specifically, the lead-in area of the CD-R 2 has eight blocks, and the foregoing pieces (1) to (12) of CD-TEXT information are continuously recorded in each block for a different combination of a language code and a character code. One block has the maximum size of 4,608 bytes (corresponding to about 0.9 seconds), including CRC information.
Various types of writing software are commercially available for recording musical data by the personal computer 1, as shown in FIG. 9, and still more various types of software will be become available in the future. For example, WinCDR handles both English and Japanese, and uses character codes of ASCII/ISO646 and MS-JIS. With WinCDR, the foregoing pieces (1) to (12) of CD-TEXT information are generated in English and in Japanese at the same time and recorded in different blocks. Nero5 handles English only, and uses character codes of ASCII/ISO646 and ISO8859-1. CD-TEXT information is recorded in a predetermined block by a selected character code. The writing software shown in the figure only handles English, Japanese, or both, and does not handle other languages. In the future, however, various additional software will become available and it will be possible that CD-TEXT information is recorded in each block by a different combination of a language code and a character code.
As shown in FIG. 8, the CD-R 2 is provided with a program area 2a for recording musical data, a lead-in area 2b for recording TOC information and CD-TEXT, and a lead-out area 2c, like usual CDs. Unlike CDs, the CD-R 2 includes a power calibration area 2d and a program memory area 2e. The power calibration area 2d records the intensity of a laser used for recording musical data, for each musical piece. The program area 2e saves the top address and the last address of a track (musical piece). Whether a disc is a CD-R can be determined by whether the power calibration area 2d or the program memory area 2e is provided or not.
FIG. 10(a) to FIG. 10(c) show a signal format used in CDs and CD-Rs. An acoustic signal has six samples (one sample has 16 bits) for each of L and R channels. The total of 12 samples are divided by eight bits to make 24 symbols, each symbol having eight bits. An error code (CIRC) having 24 symbols is added to the 24 symbols to form one unit having 32 symbols. A frame synchronization signal and a sub-code are added to this unit having 32 symbols to form one frame (shown in FIG. 10(a) and FIG. 10(b)). The sub-code having eight bits and each symbol are EFM-modulated to each have 14 bits, and the frame synchronization signal has 24 bits. In addition, three coupling bits are inserted between symbols. Therefore, one frame actually has 588 bits.
One main frame is formed of 98 frames (shown in FIG. 10(a)). The sub-code is formed of P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, and W, each having one bit in one frame as shown in FIG. 10(c). Sub-codes for the first two frames are synchronization signals S0 and S1 in the main frame, where S0=00100000000001 and S1=0000000010010. Each of P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, and W has 98 bits in the main frame. As shown in FIG. 11, sub-code Q is formed of two-bit synchronization data, four-bit control data, four-bit address data, 72-bit data, and 16-bit CRC data. A data format differs between the lead-in area and the program area. In FIG. 11, (1) shows the data format of TOC in the lead-in area, and (2) shows a data format in the program area. MNR indicates a musical-piece number (also called a track number), and ranges from 00 to 99. In the lead-in area, MNR is always 00. In the program area, MNR ranges from 01 to 99. X indicates a chapter number used only in the program area, and ranges from 00 to 99 for each musical-piece number. MIN, SEC, and FRAME indicate an elapsed time from the top of the musical piece to the current position by minute, second, and frame, respectively. ZERO indicates all zeros. AMIN, ASEC, and AFRAME indicate an absolute time from the top of the program area to the current absolute position by minute, second, and frame, respectively. POINT indicates the number (track number) of the musical piece when TOC indicates the top position of the musical piece. PMIN, PSEC, and PFRAME indicate an absolute position time from the top of the program area to the top position of the musical piece by minute, second, and frame, respectively, and corresponds to the table of contents of the disc.
FIG. 12 is a view showing TOC in the lead-in area of a CD. The top position of each musical piece is repeatedly (three times) recorded at portions where MNR=00. For example, sub-code Q indicates 00 minutes, two seconds, and 32 frames as the top position of musical piece 01 in main frames No. n, No. (n+1), and No. (n+2). In addition, the first musical piece in the disc is indicated at POINT=A0, the last musical piece in the disc is indicated at POINT=A1, and the top position of the lead-out area is indicated at POINT=A2. The figure shows a case in which the disc includes six musical pieces. As shown in FIG. 13, sub-code Q in the lead-in area of a CD-R records TOC information in the same way as for a CD, but further records predetermined information at POINT=B0, POINT=B1, and POINT=B2 in a different manner from that for a CD. Therefore, whether a disc is a CD-R or a CD can be determined by whether there are POINT=B0, POINT=B1, and POINT=B2.
In a CD, sub-code, R, S, T, U, V, and W are used to record still-picture information (line graphic, TV graphic). In a CD-R, the user can record CD-TEXT in a desired way by using sub-code, R, S, T, U, V, and W, as shown in FIG. 14. Since the area of sub-code, R, S, T, U, V, and W has 72 bytes (six bits×96 frames/eight bits) in a main frame (98 frames), the area can have the maximum-size block (4,608 bytes) in 64 main frames. The lead-in area of a CD-R has eight blocks, block 0 to block 7, as shown in FIG. 15. Each block has 80H to 8FH (H indicates hexadecimal) areas. The 80H area records an album name or a track title name, the 81H area records the name of a performer (singer, player, etc.) for each track, the 82H to 8EH areas record predetermined information, and the 8FH area records a block size, a character code, and a language code in the block.
As described above, blocks in a CD-R record an album name or a track title name, the name of a songwriter, the name of a composer, the name of an arranger, and a message from a production/sponsor site or from an artist, by a different combination of a character code and a language code. It is rare that a commercially-available CD handles CD-TEXT, but it has become common that the users write CD-TEXT in CD-Rs by using general-purpose PCs or other units.
Therefore, when the disc player reads CD-TEXT from a CD-R and displays it, the disc player needs to check a language code and a character code in each block, and to read CD-TEXT information from a corresponding block. When the disc player allows full-dot display, for example, since two-byte character code (MS-JIS) can be displayed, the disc player first checks whether the two-byte character code (MS-JIS) has been recorded; when recorded, the disc player obtains it and then displays an album name and other information in Japanese; and when not recorded, the disc player obtains one-byte character-code (such as ASCII or ISO8859-1) information and displays the album name and other information in English. It is troublesome to take two steps.
FIG. 16 is a flowchart of conventional CD-TEXT information acquisition processing. By system settings, a first-priority character code and a second-priority character code have been determined. When a full-dot display is allowed, as described above, for example, the first-priority character code is set to MS-JIS, and the second-priority character code is set to ASCII or ISO8859-1.
Both “i” and “j” are set to one (in step 101), and CD-TEXT information of an i-th block is read and stored (in step 102). Then, a character code is identified from the CD-TEXT information of the i-th block (in step 103). Whether the character code matches the j-th-priority character code is determined (in step 104). When they match, an album name and other information recorded in the i-th block are displayed by the character code (in step 105). When the character code of the i-th block does not match the j-th-priority character code in step 104, whether “i” is eight, that is, whether a character-code comparison process has been finished for all blocks, is determined (in step 106). When a negative result is obtained, “i” is incremented by one (i=i+1, in step 107), and the processes of step 102 and subsequent steps are repeated. When it is determined that “i” is eight, namely, that the character-code comparison process has been finished for all blocks, “j” is incremented by one (j=j+1) and “i” is set to one (in step 108), and the processes of step 102 and subsequent steps are performed for the next-priority character code.
As described above, conventionally, CD-TEXT information needs to be read from each block to compare the character code until a desired character code is found. It takes a long time. To check a character code, it is necessary to read information in the 8FH area from each block. When a maximum of eight blocks are recorded, it takes about 7.2 seconds to read the information. In the above-described conventional processing, it takes several seconds to several tens of seconds to display information required for the above-described processing. In general, the user has a tendency to use only MS-JIS or ASCII in writing. Irrespective of this, because a CD player searches for the best information, it takes a long time to display predetermined information.